Norms and plans as unification criteria for social collectives

Abstract

Based on the formal-ontological paradigm of Constructive Descriptions
and Situations, we propose a definition of social collectives that includes
social agents, plans, norms, and the conceptual relations between them. We also propose a typology of social collectives, including collection of agents, knowledge community, intentional collective, and intentional normative collective. Our ontology, represented as a first-order theory, provides the expressivity to talk about the contexts (social, informational, circumstantial, and epistemic), in which collectives make and produce sense